


But We're Not Married

by mktellstales



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Domestic Fluff, Fluff, Greg?, John is forgiving, M/M, Mrs. Hudson is fabulous, Post Season 4, Sherlock is a Brat, So like season 6, Weddings, way in the future
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-13
Updated: 2017-01-13
Packaged: 2018-09-17 04:09:05
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,041
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9303545
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mktellstales/pseuds/mktellstales
Summary: Sherlock and John have traveled to a lovely, little island to get married, only things don't go quite as planned.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Just a quick little thing I wrote up based on an idea from a member in one of the Johnlock groups.  
> I apologize it's only been quickly edited, and I haven't really written in a while (thank you life!), so it's a bit rusty, I'm sure. 
> 
> But if you like it, let me know :)

“I don’t understand why we’re here.”

Johns eyes were near ready to fall from his head for the number of times they rolled since they left London the night before. He stopped in the middle of the rented room, their suitcases still unpacked on the awful, yellow rug, and tried to rub away the pain built up inside his head, but it was a pain that would never, fully go away. Not while he was with the great git known as Sherlock Holmes.

“It’s our honeymoon,” he answered, as exasperated as he felt.

“We didn’t get married.”

“I’m aware of that, Sherlock.”

“So, I don’t understand then, why we’re still here.”

“Because, Sherlock, we’re a ferry and five hour train ride from London, and because we paid for this room, and three others through the weekend, and because I didn’t bloody know you would accuse the Chaplain of murder!”

“Attempted murder. And you should have known I would accuse someone of murder. Really, John, it’s like you don’t know me at all.”

Sherlock, already divested of his jacket and the tie John nearly had to choke him with to wear, dropped himself on the bed and reached for the paper he didn't get the chance to finish reading that morning. John watched him pick up where he left off, like he hadn’t knocked over an altar and spilled the Eucharist on Molly's dress only an hour ago.  
The maddening part was that Sherlock was right, damn, he was always right. It'd been almost a month since Sherlock had a good case, the kind that sent him in a dizzying spiral of puzzles and proclamations of Christmas. He was itching, and it was only a matter of time before some unsuspecting bastard incurred his wrath. John was just hoping it might of been their postman instead of the holy man they'd gotten to agree to marry them.

“Besides,” Sherlock said with a casual wave of his hand, “I didn't want to get married.”

“You didn't?” John questioned, swallowing his urge to attempt a murder right there in that salmon coloured motel room.

“Not particularly.”

  
“So, you what? Were just trying to placate me?”

“I didn't say that.”

“You said you didn't want to marry me.”

“I said I didn't want to be married.”

“That's the same damn thing, Sherlock.”

“No, it's not."  
  
You don't want to be married, we just came from our attempted wedding where you were going to marry me, ergo, you don't actually want to marry me.”

Sherlock stared at him, and the usually beautiful wrinkles along the curve of his mouth and in the corners of his eyes rose and cracked as Sherlock fell into laughter.

“Ergo, really?”

“Fuck off, Sherlock.”

“Oh, now you're upset with me. Whatever will I do?”

John closed himself in the bathroom before he did something he would regret. Sherlock was such a - he was an utter - a complete...dickhead.  
John washed up, shaved and brushed his teeth. The day was a total loss, maybe the last fifteen years were too.

No. That last bit wasn't true. Long, painful, torturous even, but worth every maddening moment, even the ones that still broke his heart.

He sighed in defeat, to Sherlock, to himself, to the love he could never live without again and went out to the main room, not to gravel, but to concede that he may have overreacted. Slightly. But the room was empty.

“Shit,” he mumbled. Leave it to Sherlock to run away and have a strop. He was worse than a child, and as they lived with a ten year old, John had empirical evidence of his claim.

John changed, and headed out to find his wayward fiancee; better he run off after the wedding than before, he thought. Though, did it matter when the wedding never happened?

  
He stopped down the hall, and knocked on Molly's door, but it was Mrs. Hudson who answered.

“Hi,” he said.

“Oh, John, hello. Going out?”

“Uh, just for a minute, yea. Wanted to say goodnight to Rosie first.”

“Of course,” she parted from the doorway to let John inside. Rosie, her hair still in bright, blonde braids and the dress that left a trail of glitter wherever she went still shimmering under the light of the lamps as she sat watching telly.

“You're not going to the pub are you?” Mrs. Hudson asked, “I know you tend to drink you're upset.”

“What? No, I'm not. I have to look for Sherlock.”

One of Rosie’s braids hit John on the cheek as she flung toward him, “you lost Sherlock?”

“He isn't lost, just not here at the moment. Don't worry.”

“Did you have a fight?” she asked.

“Just a small one. I told you not to worry.” But Rosie worried about everything, and how could she not when her mother was taken from her before she could even remember her.

“Hey, why are you still in your dress?” John asked her.

“It's pretty.”

“It is lovely, but wouldn't you be more comfortable in your pyjamas?”

“I can't twirl in my pyjamas,” she said, and spun around him.

“No, I suppose not. Alright, I'm off. Be good.”

“I will.”

John kissed the top of her head and started out the door, but stopped when Rosie called out to him, “hey dad, are they green or are they blue?”

He smiled, “doesn't matter. Yours are the sweetest eyes I've ever seen.

She smiled back, and then he left. He crossed through the common room and out a back entrance that opened to the sun setting across the rocks of the shoreline.

He walked along the beach, and found Sherlock much quicker than he thought he would, stood at the end of a dock.

“I'm sorry,” John said to him when he shuffled out to him.

“What for?”

“Telling you to fuck off.”

“Oh. You're forgiven.”

“But I am upset with you. You shouldn't have accepted my proposal if you didn't want this.”

Sherlock sighed, and turned to John. He was backlit in oranges and pinks, and looked almost ethereal as he reached out to take John's hand.

“John, love does not come easily to me,” he started, “for every concept I easily grasp, I could never make sense of the social construct of love, nor did I want to. I was content to only accept it at its chemical level - a defect to our otherwise perfect evolution as a species, but then you came into that lab, and into my life, and _you_ made sense. I don't want to be married simply because I don't understand marriage. But, I understand you, John Watson, and I trust in your ability to keep teaching me the things I don't know.”

John ran his thumb over Sherlock’s lips, trying to catch the sweet words that had just tumbled out between them, “Were those your vows?” he asked.

“More or less. I improvised near the end. Did you like them?”

“Very much.”

They walked together along the sand back to their room. Sherlock kissed John the moment the door clicked closed and laid him down on the bedspread. They pulled away the layers of cotton between them and Sherlock kissed at all of John's hidden places.

Of course, nothing was really hidden from Sherlock. He knew each spot to touch to make him keen, where to kiss to make him squirm and exactly where to breathe to make him quiver.

“ _hegh_ , god, Sherlock, your mouth - it's so-” John pulled Sherlock’s mouth to his and could faintly taste himself on his tongue, “gorgeous,” he said, finally finishing his thought.

They kissed furiously as they writhed against each other, “Sherlock, if one of us doesn't - I'm going to cut soon,” John panted.

“Oh, we don't want that, do we?” Sherlock responded, but the smirk on his face said that was exactly what he wanted.

John hitched a leg around Sherlock’s waist and rocked underneath him as the friction built between and within them. He inhaled the salt from Sherlock’s neck, scratched into his milky, white back. They were nearly there - they just needed to let go

A noise broke through their symphony of sex, and they ignored it, but then it came again, and again, and on the fourth time a voice followed on the other side of the door.

“John? Sherlock?”

“Molly?” John questioned.

“Uh, yes. I, um, I need to speak you both.”

“Is Rosie alright?”

“Oh, yes, she's just fine.”

“Then, piss off,” Sherlock said.

“What Sherlock means is we're a bit busy at the moment.”

“I know, and I'm sorry, but this is a bit urgent.”

“So is this.”

“Oh, for goodness sake!” another voice outside the door yelled just as the door opened and hit again at the wall behind them.

Mrs. Hudson barged in and crossed to the wardrobe, Molly stood still in the doorway, a scarlet blush in her cheeks as she tried to look anywhere but the naked pair.

“Did you pick that lock?” John asked Mrs. Hudson.

“You nits forgot to lock it. Don't be so modest, John. It isn't as though I haven't seen any of it before, or heard far more from my vents.”

“Oh, god.”

“Yes, a bit like that.”

A pair of trousers and a shirt were thrown at his beet red face, “get dressed you two,” she said.

“Why?”

“Because I said to.”

There was no use in arguing with Mrs. Hudson.

She and Molly left the room and Sherlock and John frustratingly dressed and pulled themselves together and opened the door back up to find their intruders waiting, and Rosie, glitter at her feet.

“Can you tell us now what's going on?” John asked as Rosie took both his and Sherlock’s hand and led them down the hall, back through the common room, and outside again to the pub next door where Greg stood at the stoop.

“About time you lot got here,” he said, tossing away a half burned cigarette.

“These two were a bit tangled up,” Mrs. Hudson said.

“ Oh, were they?”

“Shut up, George,” Sherlock said.

“Really? It's _Greg_ , and you shut up. We're doing something nice for you.”

“And just what is that?” John asked.

Greg opened the door to the small, unassuming pub, owners by the same couple who owned the motel. It was dark inside except for red, blue and green lights that swirled over the oak floor, music thumped against the floral walls and a banner that read Just Married hung above the bar.

It was unbelievably touching, if not quite correct.

“But we aren't married,” Sherlock said.

“Doesn't mean we can't have a party,” Molly said, and pulled Rosie onto the makeshift dance floor, Sherlock and Mrs. Hudson followed, while John and Greg decided the bar was a better idea - a little courage before they could make fun of themselves.

“Who are these people?” John asked when he noticed there were a few faces he didn't recognize, like the bloke, no older than thirty, Mrs. Hudson was dancing against.

“Oh, some of the regulars wanted to stay. Didn't see the harm in it.”

John's eyes disagreed. He finished his pint, and crossed the pub to where Sherlock had been twirling Rosie around and around.

“One dance,” he said, holding his hand out.

“Hmmm, I already have a pretty good partner, and weddings are kinda our thing.”

“One dance,” he repeated, “now or never.”

Sherlock’s face twisted, and he looked at Rosie, “I think I have to accept his offer,” he said.

“Just one,” she echoed, and placed their hands together.

They stepped under the lights, and held each other close as the music slowed. It didn’t matter that they weren’t married that day, it didn’t matter if they were married on any day. Their whole lives, every messy moment, was meant for them to find each other, and stop the lonely virus that was slowly killing them, and they did.

“ _So never leave me lonely, tell me you’ll love me only, and then you’ll always let it be me_ ,” John quietly whispered along to the song into the lapel of Sherlock’s jacket, and Sherlock held him tighter as the world faded away around them.

faded away around them.


End file.
